


A Really Good Team

by TwoCatsTailoring



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Meddling Reeve Tuesti, Minor Tifa Lockhart/Rude, Post-Dirge of Cerberus (Compilation of FFVII)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:07:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: A friendship on the brink of something more, a series of questionable jobs, and several misplaced articles of clothing can only lead to one thing.
Relationships: Yuffie Kisaragi/Vincent Valentine
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30
Collections: FF7 Fanworks Exchange '20





	A Really Good Team

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarasa_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarasa_cat/gifts).



There was something fishy about these missions that Reeve kept sending them on. They were too easy. Too straight-forward. Not that she was complaining at all, but it was getting a little annoying to hear how he could only trust the two of them with the task only to get there and find out it was nothing. Or almost nothing. 

The jobs themselves weren't awful. That time in Mideel was tedious and she'd been completely covered in mosquito bites when she got home. The itching had brought her close to insanity, but that was the worst of it. It was simple: get in, get the materia, and get out. She and Vincent had even cleaned out a nest of hippogriffs just to feel like they'd done something. A complete win, just like she'd expected.

And the whole ridiculous nonsense in the desert with Ruby Weapon again? That had to have been a joke. Of course, she and Vince had taken it out with her shirt as the only casualty. They'd beaten Ruby to a pulp once already. The only reason it was menacing caravans was that it was short-circuiting and out of control. Easy-peasy.

Slightly less easy-peasy afterward when he'd just walked into their hotel room while she was shirtless, having just dropped the motor-oil covered one into the trash. But that happened when you worked for Reeve. He was cheap and refused to spring for two hotel rooms anywhere, citing a need to be mindful of a fluctuating budget. Yuffie didn't much care - Vincent didn't snore and he didn't throw his clothes all over the furniture. She'd evened the score later on when she'd done the exact same thing while he was shirtless in the bathroom. 

Three cheers for equality!

But after that had come the trip into the Midgar Ruins. That one she didn't count in the list of too-easy jobs. It was the only real job that Reeve had given the two of them in at least three months. And it had sucked in ways she hadn't even been aware existed at the time.

Reeve had been so serious when he'd pulled them in his office and locked the door to tell them what he needed. Yuffie had almost refused, told the head of the WRO and her boss to take his recovery mission into the depths of Sector 0 and cram it where the sun didn't shine. There was absolutely no reason to send her or Vincent back in there for anything. Ever! Whatever was there needed to stay there in the seeping mako and dripping water as the whole place fell apart in chunks. 

But she'd made the mistake of looking at Vincent before she'd said any of that. She had her mouth open, but that one quick glance up at him, with his forehead all wrinkled up like he was thinking really hard, had made her pause long enough for his face to go from thinking to determined. He even balled up his fist at his side like this was some kind of test of his character. 

So instead of telling Reeve off, she'd just agreed. She couldn't send Vincent in there alone. There was no way, now that he knew there was a chance, he wasn't going to head down into the undercity again to recover what he could from the labs and bring Dr. Rui's body back to the surface. She couldn't let him go down there and do that alone.

This wasn't a routine mission at all, not like the others they'd gone on. It was the first time they'd had a whole squad with them. A hundred of the WROs best and brightest went down with them, sinking deep into the green air of Sector 0, the lights on their eco suits blinking in an uneven rhythm and their voices crackling over the comlinks. They were a great team, working carefully like a well-oiled machine. Teams to assess the structures and find the safest paths, extraction teams to pack up everything they found to send back to the surface. Medics, weapons specialists, all of it. All the right people in the worst place on Gaia and they got everything they came for. Including Dr. Shalua Rui's body, still in the portable med bay, looking exactly as it had 4 years before because nothing decays in mako.

But they only come back with 99 of their squad members. 

It was hard to stop thinking about that one trooper that hadn't come back. After the mission, Yuffie had closed herself in her office and cried. She'd lost agents before - in Intelligence work that was a real risk and everyone knew it. She'd lost friends, too. Sephiroth had killed Aerith right in front of her, and Geostigma took and took and took the people she loved, and even though she hadn't known Dr. Rui well, Yuffie had still liked her. But that new WRO trooper, youngest in the group and the best shot around, had misstepped. Literally taken a step backward and the catwalk he was on collapsed. Losing him like that down in the disgusting, boiling belly of a dead city, _did_ something to her. 

Just as she had started to work herself into a real fit of despair, Vincent had let himself into her office. She'd been sure she'd locked the door, but who knew with him. He probably had a key or could magic a lock open with his Super Special Vampire Powers. She'd said as much as she wiped her eyes, but he had just dryly insisted that he only walked through walls and left lockpicking to proper thieves.

Like her.

Such a kidder, that Vincent Valentine.

He'd taken her to lunch, of all things. He didn't mention the red rims of her eyes, didn't mention the mission, and didn't call her out when she stole his last ravioli. They ate, talked about their friends, and planned to head to the street fair in Edge's Market District later that week. Lunch lasted way longer than an hour and, since they were both in good with the boss, they decided to skip out on the rest of the day.

They'd spent it well, checking in on Tifa at Seventh Heaven and watching the new baby sleep so she could run a few errands before Rude got home with Marlene and Denzel. Vincent walked Denzel through the complexities of Corelian conjugation, and Yuffie double-checked Marlene's geometry before they left. On a rambling walk through Edge's streets, they hatched the greatest plan of all time: booze and ramen at Yuffie's microscopic apartment, followed by scathing critique of whatever movie they could find that was older than her but younger than him. 

That had been the night she'd learned that, after all these years, Vincent still had a few secrets to share. As he navigated her kitchen with the comfort born of familiarity, he let it drop that his nanny taught him to make real ramen when he was a kid. Yuffie was contractually obligated to give him a hard time for both having a nanny and being the type of kid who learned to cook. He had taken it like a champ.

Probably because he knew that the noodles he handed her were going to taste like heaven. Yuffie wasn't annoyed that his was better than hers - there was no way she was going to waste hours making her own broth when she could buy it in about 5 minutes. He might have all the time in the world, but she was a mere mortal and had to eat!

His smile when she'd said that was so small and shy, his face tipped down to hide it, made her wish she'd gotten more expensive beer. If she had, then she'd be able to blame her blush on the alcohol. 

It was an open secret at this point. Yuffie was sure that Vincent knew she had a crush on him, especially after nearly ten years of friendship. All their mutual friends sure knew it. And it really didn't help that if he did know, he never said anything about it or made it weird. Because if he had, well. She could handle that a lot better than his seemingly chronic case of being a really decent guy. _That_ just led to her crush surging every once in a while, like when he smiled because she gave him a hard time, and he was fluent enough in Yuffie-speak to know that it was a compliment.

It'd thrown her off her game to have to deal with the sudden re-realization that there was just nobody in her life quite like Vincent. She didn't know how to put it any other way - he was sarcastic, dry, and prone to looking tragic, but she knew that underneath all that was a hilarious, kind person who cared a whole lot more than he ever let on.

She knew her commentary on the movie they found lacked the cutting edge he expected. He gave her a _Look_ out of the corner of his eye once or twice, like he wasn't sure what was up, but he never said anything outright, so she couldn't even defend herself with a lie. Yuffie wasn't sure if she was more annoyed by that or if she was grateful. It'd been an impossibly long day and she just didn't have space in her brain to sort it out right then.

Between her feelings for Vincent flaring up and her feelings about the mission starting to creep back in, she didn't even notice that when he left, he 1) hugged her. With both arms. Not just the one-armed things he usually reluctantly gave to his friends when they insisted. A proper, both arms wrapped snug around her hug. And 2) kissed the top of her head before he walked off down the hall.

Well, she did notice but not until he was already in the elevator and as good as gone for the night. He literally left her standing just outside her apartment door, flat-footed and mouth gaping open like a fish out of water. 

So rude.

But later in the week, after she'd had a few days to think about this new development, she was ready. Yuffie had three solid plans for how to broach the subject of real hugs and head kissing with Vincent and didn't actually decide which one to use until he was standing in front of her and saying hi.

And the one she picked was not one of the three. A fourth option presented itself to her while she watched Vincent flow through the sea of people in the street. She felt her heart do something like a backflip when the breeze caught his hair and tugged his uneven bangs back away from his face. The sun at just the right angle to make his eyes go from wine-deep to cherry soda red. 

She'd smiled up at him as she said hi and popped up on the balls of her feet, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. Like it was nothing unusual. Like it was something they'd done every day for years.

She'd never seen him turn quite that shade of pink before. Yuffie almost apologized, but he saved her from that mortification by lacing his fingers through hers and not letting go until he had to because the deal they found on candied mango was too good to pass up. Digging out as much as they both wanted took all four of their hands.

They didn't talk about it afterward, and that suited Yuffie just fine. Why talk about something obvious anyway? In Yuffie's estimation, you didn't get much more obvious in these things than waking up the next morning with their tongues winding together lazy and slow, like the sun creeping up over Edge.

They'd kept up the not talking about it - whatever this new relationship status was - for weeks. There wasn't a need to, as far as she could tell. She was enjoying herself and so was Vincent. He kept being decent (except when the situation warranted a level of indecency). There really was something about him that felt so comfortable. So right. So normal.

Honestly, that should have bothered her. Vincent Valentine was anything _but_ normal. Maybe that was part of his charm?

After the mission from Reeve that was just a mad dash through the streets of Junon, hot on the trail of an old ShinRa Era spy who had enough delusions of his own importance to have stolen the plans for a new power plant to try to sell to Rufus ShinRa, they had both realized they might have a slight logistical problem.

Well, a problem beyond the fact that corporate secrecy was giving half-baked nut jobs the idea they could buy their way back in with a very diminished ShinRa Corp. That was just going to happen and Reeve paid them very well to keep it from creating a public incident. 

No, the more pressing problem was that when Vince packed for the Junon job, he'd somehow overlooked the fact that it was her black jeans he packed instead of his own. If he hadn't crashed through the rotting lid of the dumpster he'd landed on a few hours before, it wouldn't have been that much of a problem. But it had been a butcher shop's dumpster, and that smell was going to take at least four washes to get out. 

The annoyance that set in afterward had been short-lived. Vincent didn't even make it to the stairs before Yuffie had her head around the door, calling him back. 

The pants she'd packed had been his. 

They'd had a good laugh over the fact that they both had managed to collect enough of each other's wardrobe at their separate apartments to create this problem and offer the solution in the same breath. But it got Yuffie to thinking….

The thought she'd had - a whispered suggestion of 'well why not?' - was lost as another replaced it. The roll of weekly jobs from Reeve, each one turning out to be less vitally important than he let on than the last, started getting on her nerves. 

First came the wild goose chase in Corel that turned out to be nothing more complicated than a couple of smuggling rings running into one another and puffing out their chests, making more noise than anything.

After that was the report that Deepground units had been spotted near the Mithril mine. And sure enough, they were there. How and why was a mystery they didn't get the answer to for nearly a month, but between the two of them, she and Vincent had neutralized the situation and returned to Kalm in enough time to enjoy the Annual Chocobo Festival like little kids.

She'd won Vincent a giant stuffed Chocobo. It was green and held a place of honor in his living room until he objected to it, saying that he felt like he was being judged and found lacking every time he kissed her. 

He didn't complain as much about the plants she brought over, though. Just a couple of pots at first, little sprouts from the jungle of vines and flowers that grew in front of her windows. But when she noticed that he'd been watering them when she wasn't there, she took that as an invitation to bring more. Soon, the small front hall of his basement apartment was crowded with pots and hanging baskets that he dutifully watered and cared for.

After the job at Icicle Inn that was supposed to have taken a whole week only took them a day and a half, Vincent voiced what she had been thinking all along. Did she ever wonder if Reeve was making up jobs to send them on? 

Nothing he sent them on was anywhere near as dangerous as he said in the briefings, or as severe. She'd narrowed her eyes at Vincent and leaned in. The conversation that followed led them to two hypotheses: either Reeve was going off the deep end or was trying to play matchmaker. 

The following Monday, Yuffie went through her agents' expense reports while Vincent dug through the mission lists for the past three months. On Tuesday, she ran a report on the hot spots for WRO intervention all over the planet. He took Reeve's administrative assistant to lunch and let the man complain as much as he liked, making all the right sympathetic noises. 

On Wednesday, they met back at her apartment and compared notes. Neither of them needed more proof than what they already had in front of them - finance approved a hotel room for each operative on a mission unless there were more than five on any given trip. All WRO activity was concentrated around Costa del Sol, the Northern Crater, and along the construction corridors - none of which were anywhere near where Reeve had sent them. Missions were graded by possible threat levels, and none of the ones they had gone on ranked more than a 2 of 5, save for the one to Old Midgar. 

They agreed, though, that they were the only people he could have sent in there. It would have been an excellent misdirected evidence point, too, had it not been Yuffie and Vincent he was trying to mislead. Reeve Tuesti was a smart man, but he was not particularly subtle about _this_. 

The icing on the cake was Reeve's assistant - a serious young man who was there to do the job he was hired to do - nothing more, nothing less. He was frustrated to no end because Reeve, the head of the WRO, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with minor problems that would be better delegated to the appropriate departments. Reeve also insisted on bringing up his friends' personal lives from time to time. It made the straight-laced young man deeply uncomfortable and he held forth about it at length, glad to have the outlet.

They'd stared at one another across the coffee table for a long time once they'd realized they were right. Vincent had been the first to speak, glad that Reeve hadn't lost his mind. Yuffie had to agree, but she was already off and thinking about what to do about it. Yeah, they could leave it alone and let Reeve figure it out on his own, but that didn't sound fun like nearly enough fun. If he was going to be ham-handed about meddling, she thought he deserved to be called out for it.

Vincent agreed. After another fifteen minutes of ideas, they had a plan that put a smile on both of their faces and made Yuffie reflect again that there really was something special about Vincent. Still water, in his case, hid a mischievous spirit that rivaled her own. 

As she fell asleep that night, the sound of his even breathing close in her ear, her last thought was that she could really get used to this. That she already had. 

Friday morning, after the department heads' weekly meeting with Reeve, the two of them lingered to have a word with him. They chatted about nothing much then, right on cue, Yuffie checked her phone and feigned surprise. She was running behind! 

Was Reeve coming to Seventh tonight? Great, she'd see him there. 

Were they still on for lunch at 12:30, Vince? Yep, see you then.

She stretched up as Vincent leaned down, the two of them meeting in the middle for a quick kiss before Yuffie headed out of the room.

Vincent reported over lunch that Reeve took it well, only gaping for a few seconds before he shook it off and acted like nothing happened. He supposed Reeve would at least stop with the useless missions now, and Yuffie agreed. 

"It's too bad, though," Yuffie groused mildly, as she stole one of his fries. 

Vincent's brows came together and he asked, "What is?"

"Well," she felt her stomach flip with nervousness. She tried to shake it off with a toss of her head, "We make a pretty good team."

Vincent nodded in agreement and Yuffie sat up straighter, determined to see this through now that she was here. "Maybe we should move in together."

She'd been thinking about it again, ever since they'd realized that Reeve was sending them all over Gaia doing busy-work in the hopes that they would start dating. But that was part of the problem with bringing this up: they'd never talked about what this was. Were they dating? The more she thought about it, the less sure she was. 

And it felt stupid, not knowing after months of spending as much time together as possible. Which, now that she was looking at it like that, made her feel even more stupid. You didn't spend every night with somebody while paying rent on a place you were only in if he was with you and not call it dating. 

Maybe not talking about this had been a bad plan.

She didn't have to wait long for Vincent's reply. He paused for maybe a fraction of a second before nodding in agreement again. "Maybe we should. We'd have to find a place with two closets, though."

That wasn't the argument that she'd expected, but then again, this was Vincent. "Why's that?"

"Because I pulled out three crop tops this morning before I found any of my shirts." He half-stood and grabbed the abandoned newspaper from a neighboring table and flipped to the For Rent section.

Yuffie laughed. "Why didn't you wear one? I think my green one is at your place. It'd look good on you."

Vincent folded the paper back and laid in on the table between them so she could look through the ads as well. "I'm too pale to be showing that much skin in public. I'd blind old ladies and make children cry." He pointed to a large ad in the center of the page, "Northtown is closer to Headquarters, but I'd rather stay close to Seventh Heaven."

Yuffie nodded, "Yeah, same." There really was something really wonderful about Vincent Valentine. She was really glad that she was going to get to live with it for a long time. 


End file.
